Could this be happening a lot right before our eyes and only noticed in 
the most extreme cases of disease or poisoning?
 

 

 Altruistic self-removal of health-compromised honey bee workers from 
their hive 

By: Olav Rueppell, M.K Hayworth and N.P. Ross 

Rueppell, O., Hayworth, M. K., and Ross, N. P. (July 2010) Altruistic 
self-removal of health-compromised honey bee workers from their hive. 
Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 23(7), 1538-1546. DOI: 
10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02022.x 

The definitive version is available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com. 

 

Abstract: 

Social insect colonies represent distinct units of selection. Most 
individuals evolve by kin selection and forgo individual reproduction. 
Instead, they display altruistic food sharing, nest maintenance and 
self-sacrificial colony defence. Recently, altruistic self-removal of 
diseased worker ants from their colony was described as another 
important kin-selected behaviour. Here, we report corroborating 
experimental evidence from honey bee foragers and theoretical analyses. 
We challenged honey bee foragers with prolonged CO2 narcosis or by 
feeding with the cytostatic drug hydroxyurea. Both treatments resulted 
in increased mortality but also caused the surviving foragers to 
abandon their social function and remove themselves from their colony, 
resulting in altruistic suicide. A simple model suggests that 
altruistic self-removal by sick social insect workers to prevent 
disease transmission is expected under most biologically plausible 
conditions. The combined theoretical and empirical support for 
altruistic self-removal suggests that it may be another important 
 

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